


Reboot

by thursdaynext_27



Category: Wilby Wonderful (2004)
Genre: Community: ds_snippets, Gen, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-27
Updated: 2011-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-15 03:11:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thursdaynext_27/pseuds/thursdaynext_27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new city. A new country. A fresh start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reboot

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2011 [ds_snippets](http://community.livejournal.com/ds_snippets)/[dsc6dsnippets](http://dsc6dsnippets.dreamwidth.org/) Snippet Tag Event #1. The prompt was 'change.'

Tuesday mornings start with the Art Institute, watching families and school groups line up impatiently to enter and rush off to those visitor-friendly sections: Ancient, Arms and Armor, Impressionism. Carol waits for them to pass, and then goes to her favorite rooms. In college she was drawn to Pollock, Warhol, de Kooning, Richter, and it’s still the contemporary vision that speaks to her. The landscapes and impressionists: not so much. A haystack is just a haystack. A coastline is still just a coastline.

Walking back from Artist’s Café with her cappuccino, she passes Utrecht Art Supplies. Maybe next Tuesday she’ll go in. For the first time in forever, her fingers itch to hold a brush and put paint to canvas.

Carol enjoys this break from the chaos of dealing with artists, agents, customers, egos and crises. The gallery doesn’t pay well, but between that and her nest egg she has time to decide her next steps. She knows Buddy gave her the entire house sale proceeds out of some private guilt, but he insisted she would need it more in an expensive city. He had assumed Toronto or Vancouver, but instead she chose a new city, a new country.

Chicago is loud, crowded, with everyone rushing, distracted and focused. And Carol feels more at home in six months than after seven years on the island.

Wilby Wonderful. Wonderful Wilby. Order doesn’t matter when the words are mutually exclusive. The only thing Carol hates more than Wilby is the person she became there, the one Buddy stared at like he had never seen her before.

She’ll have to live with what she did that night, but she can at least close her eyes now without seeing his legs swaying. With each day, the unhappiness from another life fades a bit more.


End file.
